Fanfarlo, Race Horses, Mr Bones & The Dreamers

This London-based five-piece Fanfarlo are fronted by Swedish singer Simon Balthazar, whose presence dominates this rather samey and overwrought debut. With a mannered, slurred singing voice pitched somewhere between David Byrne and Brendan Flowers of The Killers, he is both what makes Fanfarlo most distinctive and also the thing that is most likely to wind you up. Their name refers to Charles Baudelaire’s novella, “La Fanfarlo.”